The lovely young woman who cared for my son in his very early years as I was leaving home at 3:30am for News Breakfast and while my husband was working interstate was one of the sweetest, warmest young women I ever knew.
Like all people who have a gift for child care, we could never find the end of her patience, the limit of her capacity to play, or the boundaries of her physical exhaustion.
Mind you, she was fit. I listened with shame and embarrassment to her tales of weightlifting and bodybuilding, evidence of a great approach to health and longevity. This came up in conversation one day when she casually observed that if she was ever diagnosed with something serious like cancer, she’d never go for traditional treatments — no chemo or anything like that: “I’ll just change my diet to eat raw foods and that should take care of it.”
Cancer survivor’s three-year wait for breast surgery put her life on hold
Anyone reading this who has struggled to find good care for their kids will know exactly the dilemma I felt in that moment: that her view was idiotic, and I didn’t want that thinking anywhere near my child, but she was too good to let go and so I was going to hold my tongue and accept her difference. Bonkers as it seemed to me.
These were the days of the wellness fraud Belle Gibson peddling her lies about curing cancers that she never had with alternative treatments, and if you don’t remember those times, they were pretty exciting: her book and ideas caught like fire among a generation of women who were embracing new fitness regimes like Pilates and spinning and who were eagerly seeking ways to stay healthy and young.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s nonsense rode in on the back of this wave and new generations of consumers became primed, through a nascent phase of new social media platforms and the beautiful-looking people on them, to be open to alternative approaches to youth and beauty.
Elle is not just anyone
My lovely nanny moved on to other work and we lost contact before the public exposure of Gibson’s lies, and I always felt a little tender and sad for her knowing how deeply betrayed she would have felt; how a fundamental belief system she had constructed for herself had been pulled apart by an idolised, seemingly perfect public figure.
I thought about this young woman again this week, as the supermodel Elle Macpherson revealed a private battle with breast cancer that she chose to treat “holistically” and not by the traditional methods of surgery, chemo or radiation. Macpherson said after exhaustive research into how to treat her HER2 positive oestrogen receptive intraductal carcinoma, and after seeking opinions from 32 doctors and specialists, she decided against the repeated advice of chemo and instead constructed an alternative treatment regime.
‘Incredibly irresponsible’: Doctor slams Elle Macpherson’s breast cancer treatment decision
Over eight months, with the help of her primary doctor and a team including a doctor of naturopathy, a holistic dentist, osteopath, chiropractor and two therapists, Macpherson implemented what she calls “an intuitive, heart-led, holistic approach” to treating her cancer. She says she is now in remission.
I thought about our former nanny. I wondered if her faith in the alternative had been restored. I fervently hoped that she had no need of any of this.
Elle Macpherson is an odd figure. Private, but very public with her WelleCo supplements company; 60 but looking much younger, clearly with the kind of cosmetic assistance that good money can buy. She does not present herself as a health guru and is at pains to assure others in her Women’s Weekly interview that she is not offering anyone advice on how to treat her cancer.
But she is not just anyone. And that reality has sparked fury. Doctors from the UK to Australia and back have slammed her pronouncements, with one professor of public health from Trinity College Dublin saying “this bullshit kills people”.
What’s the value in talking about Elle’s experience?
You have to ask if all this should matter to Macpherson when she has the right to tell a personal story that will have mass appeal to the many people who admire and envy her: it’s a tale of non-invasive therapy and individual choice.
Her story exists in the context of generalised suspicion of Western medicine and malicious misinformation and disinformation about well-established treatments. (You’d be forgiven for wondering whether Macpherson’s refusal of medical advice from those 32 doctors might be connected to her having dated the disgraced Andrew Wakefield, the man responsible for the fraudulent, but still influential, study linking vaccines to autism.)
Apart from everything else that Macpherson claims drove her need for an alternative approach, it needs to be said that only someone with the money she has could afford the choice of exclusive therapies, infusions, treatments and experimentations. Her experience is rare and particular — so what’s the value in talking about it?
Elle Macpherson previously dated British anti-vaccine activist and discredited academic Andrew Wakefield. (Luke MacGregor: Reuters)
Macpherson is not just one ordinary patient recounting her common journey — and she must know that.
When you have been known by your first name all your life; when you have called yourself The Body; when you have a successful and presumably lucrative “wellness” and lifestyle brand; when who you are is what you do and what you have to sell, then an utterance like this can only be heard as part of the lifestyle choice you propose to the consumer, and one that the buyer will surely hear as an essential part of the proposition you are selling.
Macpherson’s claim that in her choice of therapies she is only speaking about herself, and not offering medical advice to anyone else, would only make sense if her treatments were off-brand from what she is selling: but they are not. They are an essential representation of who she is in the world and what she is presenting to her consumers and, if she is fortunate enough to be successful with her treatment long-term, then she becomes a living, healthy representation of the lifestyle proposition she is selling.
The power and danger of influence
That’s why doctors and cancer organisations around the world are calling what she is saying dangerous, because the appeal of her message is irresistible: show me one person who wouldn’t want to dodge chemotherapy, or the frankly medieval horrors of some forms of radiation therapy (and here is where, at the risk of being called irresponsible myself, I call on all cancer treating specialists to please refine the sometimes brutal treatment of some radiation therapies: I have seen first-hand its singeing horrors, and surely in 2024 we no longer have to destroy the village in order to save it).
Not all voices carry in the same way; not everyone has clout: Elle does, and while she is right to say that she is entitled to tell her story and share her experience, it’s also true that it’s dangerous to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre.
Influencers like her, matched with our own desire to live longer while feeling younger have primed us to hear this raised voice and run.
This weekend the perils of poor sleep, the threats to rates and the dangers of quiet vacationing: there are monsters everywhere.
What to read this weekend
Have a safe and happy weekend and don’t forget to catch up with this week’s episode of my podcast, You Don’t Know Me, in which my old work husband Michael Rowland rejoins me on the couch to talk about the looming day, and it is drawing nigh, when the breakfast alarm will no longer ring for him. It’s a big revelation amid a lovely conversation with someone I came to know well.
Michael came to the interview wearing this t-shirt, which was a direct provocation to me. So, I will reply with this song — he knows what I mean.
Go well — especially you, Michael.
Virginia Trioli is presenter of Creative Types and a former co-host of ABC News Breakfast and Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne.
